If you could travel in time …

As you know, I kind of have a thing about time travel. Thinking about time travel sure beats the socks off oh, you know, worrying about money or whether something terrible has befallen the missing cat.

i.e. the ability to travel in time would mean, theoretically that you could kill your own ancestors, thus preventing your own birth. Indeed — so the argument goes — by altering any of the ingredients of the past, even by so much as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, you would inevitably change the present. Since the present manifestly exists, and is as it is, then obviously time-travel cannot occur.

And then goes on to explain that, well, maybe time travel can occur, if you understand modern physics, which I don’t. Oh– this is interesting. A few weeks ago, I was wondering if, in a universe of (presumably) multiple universes, do the rules of physics apply in all of them? I asked SciGuy, and he said no.

If you could go back in time — or forward, for that matter — what would you do? Except kill Hitler, which we’ve already discussed. Me, I’d go back to Saturday, and I would not let the cat out.

19 Responses

I’d go back to when I was 5 1/2 years old. I would warn Adm.Kimmell the japs were going to attack the next morning…..I would kill my drunken navy father and make my mother marry a local…that way I would grow up in Hawaii and could have started freediving/spearfishing 20 years before I did…and I would save my mothers life….ok, I’m selfish!!!

Didn’t Robin Cook write a book (that became a movie) about people traveling back in time to the Middle Ages…only they were actually traveling to an alternate universe, ala string theory? BTW, I’d go back in time to when I met my first wife, and I wouldn’t ask her out.

This movie came out back when I was a little more naive that is now the case and I actually got excited about the possibilities being discussed here. If you have an hour and a half to spare and are good at suspension of disbelief it is pretty entertaining.

That was then and now is well now. I’m now thinking that achieving time travel and therefore violating the laws of physics, well convential physics anyway, might be harder proving the existance of God.

Good luck finding your missing kitty. The best bet with most cats is to never let them out. We had a cat for 10 years that was the exception to that rule. We could let it out each day in our fenced backyard and it never once left the back yard even though it could have easily done so. Like I say though most cats will tend to stray given the chance.

So, did Evil Dwight come up with a “theme-for-today?” Time travel… much like asking about a 4-sided triangle… is contradictory in its definition. We know about movement in 3 dimensions, but we don’t even understand the “arrow of time,” much less movement in the 4th dimension. And Eric is correct, that alternate universes may have different physical constants, meaning the way physics would work could be different… in some, radically different. The idea of infinite universes boggles the mind, but if it exists, then traveling back and killing your grandparents is entirely possible, all without affecting your particular universe or you. But would all this work at the macro level, meaning a large collection of symbiotic molecules (i.e., people), I hardly think it’s likely.

Musing about time-travel is akin to thinking about winning the lottery… kinda fun, but EXTREMELY unlikely to happen. And although, in the case of lotteries, we know it DOES happen for a few people, time-travel — Charlie Chaplin outtakes not withstanding — like the possibility of Sandra Bullock falling in love with me, is pure fantasy.

I believe that it was in an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson that I heard his assert that once you have built a time machine, you can only travel back in time until the day that it was built. If true, our grandparents have nothing to worry about.

Given how our society works, I hope that such a machine is not created in my lifetime. I have no doubt that our grandchildren won’t think twice about paying a fee to come back in time to kill us. From their perspective, we are already dead.

And if I could go back in time, I would go to 1:50 this morning and beat Matt B. to that GREAT post!

I wouldn’t travel back in time and kill my grandfather. I liked them both. I would go back to about 1970 and whisper “buy Intel at IPO” into my stockbroker Dad’s ear.

I’d then travel to 1978 and tell my teen self, “Buddy, chicks never go for the bass player. Stick with guitar.”

Lastly I’d travel back to 1999 and tell my adult self, “Go get a stress test. Have the doc focus on the left anterior descending artery.”

Selfish? Yup, but it is my time travel!

I always toy with that idea for a decent novella or novelette. One idea came to me when we were at church last Sunday. A time traveler goes back and convinces Pontius Pilate to go against the wishes of the crowd and crucify Barrabas instead.

Jesus is still able to perform miracles and does so for the rest of his life. His followers grow and instead of adopting the cross as the symbol they adopt a stylized whip (to symbolize the scourging Jesus endured for your sins). Penitents appear, telling you that you must pay for your own sins in the way Jesus die. Jesus later dies at age 66 instead of 33 (roughly the age people died at that time if they lived to adulthood). By then, instead of a Christian church forming the movement redefines Judaism. It spreads throughout the empire.

Time travel, huh? I read a short story once about a hunter who booked a trip to the Jurasic to hunt a certain T Rex that was about to die anyway. I don’t remember what happened but he screwed up some way or other and changed the fabric of history. However, I always thought that would be a cool thing to do…hunt dinos I mean.

One could certainly insure that one would be wealthy. Just think about going back to 1995 or so and pick up a few shares of MicroSoft, Intel, Amazon, and Yahoo.

Insureing that Lincoln would not be assasinated would be interesting. Reconstruction would not have been the same and possibly could have affected race relations even today.

If you haven’t read them already, I would suggest these four titles for your winter reading about time travel: The great Jack Finney’s two masterpieces, “Time and Again” and “From Time to Time”; Peter Delacorte’s “Time On My Hands”; and a true mind-bender, David Gerrold’s “The Man Who Folded Himself.” There are also some collections of tasty short time-travel stories by Finney available, if you just can’t get enough.

I believe Hawking has stated that there exists a “Chronology Protection Principle”, which Kyrie’s quote pretty well describes. I believe that this is the way it is, that time travel to the past will not ever be possible by any means. Time travel to the future, if possible, would be worthless, since you could not travel back to your present day, because it would then be the past, once you were in the future.

Now I am the W above who doesn’t believe it is possible, but I like to dream just like the one who wants to save Lincoln and John Lennon. I wonder what if Bobby Kennedy’s assassination could be prevented. On JFK, I have lots of questions and concerns, but RFK just never got his chance.

Time travel, huh? I read a short story once about a hunter who booked a trip to the Jurasic to hunt a certain T Rex that was about to die anyway. I don’t remember what happened but he screwed up some way or other and changed the fabric of history. However, I always thought that would be a cool thing to do…hunt dinos I mean.

Posted by: Rodger at October 26, 2010 12:47 PM

The story was A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. First published in 1952. I read it as part of a short story collection in the 4th grade (1970). That story, along with Heinlein’s The Roads Must Roll hooked me on science fiction.